materials, on the backs of horses or mules, would be expensive and inconvenient.

The houses in Persia are of three general orders, corresponding in appearance and expense to the higher, middle, and lower classes of the people. The two former are built of sun-dried bricks. The palaces of princes and of rich nobles are sometimes built of burned brick and lime; but these are of rare occurrence. The houses are low, making up for the lack of height by the extent of the ground they cover. We scarcely know whether to describe them as of two stories or of one. They are both, or neither; or rather, partly one, and partly the other. A house consists of a range of rooms, with alternately high and low ceilings; and over the lower ones, which are usually the halls through which the others are entered, low upper rooms are built, whose roofs rise but little, if at all, above those of the high ones of the lower story. The windows completely fill the whole front of the rooms, except the spaces occupied by two pillars in large rooms; and they open from a few inches above the floor, to a height of five or six feet. A room thus thrown open is delightfully cool in summer, especially when

shaded by the extensive canvass awnings used in Persia.

The windows are constructed of polygonal spaces, in appearance like the compartments of a honeycomb, one, two, or three inches in diameter. Those in which the interstices are of the smallest pattern are left open-that is, without the spaces being filled up-so that the air is admitted freely, while a person can look through without being observed from without. The window toward the street is usually of this kind; and such was doubtless the kind of "lattice" through which the mother of Sisera, with her ladies, (Judges v. 28,) looked forth for her expected son. These sashes, when of wider texture, are usually filled with small diamondshaped pieces of glass, which are translucent, but not transparent, corresponding in size to the interstices, and of various bright glaring colours, which give to the whole, as viewed from within, a brilliant and somewhat imposing appearance. A single window of a Persian parlour, thus glazed, will cost twenty or thirty pounds, or even much more, according to the delicacy of the wood-work, for in all kinds of joining the Persians are great amateurs, and are really very skilful. It is related by Mr. Fraser, that

the Persian princes, who were some years ago in London, seemed to bestow more genuine admiration on nothing than on the various curious specimens of joinery and wood-carving which came incidentally under their notice. The middle classes cover their sashes with oiled paper; and another circumstance in which their houses differ from those of the higher class is, that the latter are mounted in front with a projection, from two to five feet wide, which consist of jutting rafters, inclining a little upward, on which jointed planks are fitted, and the whole is often tastefully painted and curiously carved. This projection adds much to the beauty of the edifice, as well as protects its walls and windows from the weather.

If the houses in Palestine, as is not unlikely, were of similar arrangements, our Lord probably stood in the gallery formed by this projection, when the friends of the paralytic man vainly sought access to him through the crowd which filled the court, and therefore went up to the roof, and, removing some of the boards which covered this part, were enabled to let their helpless friend down to the place where Jesus stood. Our acquaintance with various oriental houses, has presented difficul

ties to every other explanation, and has shown this to be the most natural and intelligible of any. To remove any part of the substantial flat roof for such a purpose, would be very difficult, and would overwhelm the interior with the dust and rubbish of which such roofs are composed.

The outsides of the houses in Persia are plastered with a mixture of mud and cut straw, of which also, as in ancient Egypt, (Exod. v. 7,) the sun-dried bricks are composed. This is not unpleasant to the European eye, (probably from its having some rough resemblance to what we call Roman cement,) especially when, as is often the case, the margins of the doors and windows are dressed with white plaster, which, alternating with the spaces of brown mud, impart a kind of liveliness to the front.

But when we enter the interior of a good Persian house, we forget the narrow approach, and that the walls and exterior surface are of mud. The rooms are beautifully plastered with an admirable white gypsum, much firmer, harder, and more dazzlingly white, than anything of the same kind we possess, and the floors are covered with the richest carpets the east can furnish. The floors are first plastered with

a mixture of lime and earth, and are thus rendered hard and level; they are then covered with the reed mats, over which the carpets are laid. It is probably known to most of our readers that these carpets, which are so much prized by us, under the name of "Turkey carpets," are really the manufacture of Persia.

The walls in the interior of the rooms are not dead surfaces, but are relieved by a row of recesses, about a yard square, the same height from the floor, and a few inches deep, at intervals of a foot or more from each other. High rooms have two rows of such recesses, with a ledge projecting two or three inches, to separate them. These recesses are intended for effect rather than use, but some of them are occasionally used to contain curious ornamental articles. Plastering is also often wrought into various diamonds, and curious geometrical figures, and into arabesques, flowers, and cornices of considerable elegance. The walls are not unusually painted, sometimes painted and gilded; and, at others-but rarely, unless in royal palaces-they are almost wholly lined with mirrors. Results which are tawdry, rather than splendid, when supplying the substantial magnificence which we expect to find in royal